Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust, Room 18
British Museum Room 18 Air Sample, 2025
Stainless steel, mild steel, air
235 x 235 x 340mm
Unique
Letter to the Keeper, 2025
Giclee print, aluminium
850 x 110mm
Unique
/
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.1), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.2), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.3), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.4), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.5), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.6), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.7), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.8), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.9), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.10), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.11), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Dane Mitchell
Archive of Dust (British Museum, Room 18, no.12), 2001 - ongoing (collected 2023, cultured 2024, printed 2025)
800mm x 800mm
Giclee print, aluminium
Edition of 3
Archive of Dust, Room 18 stems from a project artist Dane Mitchell began in 2001, involving the ongoing collection of dust from museums and galleries around the world from which bacteria is cultured. The longevity of Dane Mitchell’s accumulation of dust over nearly 25 years now contains samples from hundreds of institutions. Archive of Dust, Room 18 focusses on dust collected in Room 18 at the British Museum, the current resting place of The Parthenon Marbles.
Alongside the series of 12 photographic works produced from scans of bacterial growth grown from the dust gathered in Room 18 is Room 18 Air Sample, 2024 which captures the atmospheric essence of Room 18. Encapsulating the air in a hermetic void, Room 18 Air Sample holds a hollow space that suspends and captures a present. This present contains the imprint of bodies, bacteria, and objects, now held in a device designed to capture air samples for Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry analysis. Unlike traditional forms of cultural displacement, the air’s removal from Room 18 creates no void in its original location.
Room 18 Air Sample is also accompanied by a letter-work (a form first employed by the artist in 1997) to the British Museum requesting access to make the air capture and describe the future analysis and synthesis of the scent of Room 18.
Tead Francesca Zappia's accompanying text here.
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Dear Keeper of Greece and Rome,
I am writing to you in the hope that you might be open to discussing an impulse.
With your assistance, I hope to capture the airborne compounds eddying in Room 18, on the ground floor of the British Museum.
Room 18 is where the Parthenon Sculptures in the possession of the British Museum are currently held, and I wish to ensnare the aromascape of this space via a non-invasive technique used in the perfume industry called Headspace Technology, which entraps volatile molecules rising off and emanating from things in the world.
The practicalities of the Headspace capture are straightforward and simply involve placing the six-litre air sampling canister I have couriered to you in the gallery for several minutes. The canister will arrive with the air evacuated from its interior, producing a vacuum. When the valve is opened, the surrounding air will be drawn into the interior and captured. This will allow for a reliable sample of Room 18 's air to be trapped and stored.
A future wish of mine is to take the Headspace capture of Room 18 and analyse it via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This procedure will allow for the reproduction of the aromascape through synthesis. This might then allow for the conjuring up of the British Museum in the body of the sniffer: the museum would take shape in the brain as the molecules in the facsimile-scent of Room 18 hit the olfactory sensory neurons of the sniffer.
In tandem, the atmosphere of Room 18 will be stored in perpetuity in the canister in which the air is captured and provide an accurate index of human presence in the museum, as our skin, fibres and exhalations swirl around and cling to the Parthenon Sculptures, just as they themselves continue to inexorably slide evermore into the world of dust.
I will arrange for the canister to be couriered back to me once the atmosphere is entrapped. Thank you so much for your time in considering my proposal.
Sincerely,
Dane Mitchell